Ex-Rebels Seek to Stem Loss of Voter Support

Facundo Guardado has long taken pride in being the leading advocate for molding the Marxist guerrillas-turned-politicians of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front into a party that can win elections.

Two years ago, as newly elected party chairman, he cobbled together alliances and promoted moderate candidates that let the FMLN achieve at the ballot box what it could not on the battlefield: control of this capital and El Salvador’s second-largest city, San Ana, along with a major voice in national policy. The FMLN had only one less vote in the Legislative Assembly than the ruling, far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as Arena.

It was the FMLN’s best electoral showing since laying down arms in 1992.

Guardado formed a strong base for the party’s presidential bid in this year’s March 7 elections, preparing the FMLN to challenge Arena’s peacetime monopoly on the presidency.

Yet as the FMLN nominee, Guardado has been largely unable to capitalize on that base. A leading independent poll even shows him almost neck-and-neck with the third-place candidate, far behind Arena nominee Francisco Flores.

“They have lost a good opportunity, and they are going to suffer a huge defeat,” predicted Rodolfo Cardenal, vice rector at the University of Central America, or UCA, which conducted a nationwide poll with 1,239 participants that has a 4% margin of error.

How could the FMLN go from its victories in the 1996 midterm elections to a party 20 points behind in the UCA’s most recent presidential poll, especially when two-thirds of the respondents said poverty and crime increased in 1998 under Arena’s rule?

“The FMLN is defeating itself,” said Ruben Zamora, the candidate for the United Democratic Center who virtually tied with Guardado for second place, according to the UCA poll. The poll showed that Arena has not gained voters. Instead, FMLN supporters increasingly have decided not to cast ballots.

Guardado was named his party’s candidate in one of the most acrimonious nominating processes this nation has seen. Convention delegates deadlocked twice, had to be reassembled three times and changed the nominating rules before they could agree on a standard-bearer.

By that time, three of the strongest potential candidates--popular San Salvador Mayor Hector Silva, respected former human rights prosecutor Victoria Marina de Aviles and veteran political analyst Hector Dada--had withdrawn their candidacies or refused to run.

“They had good candidates, but the party just disintegrated,” Cardenal said. Further, it failed to reunite once a nominee was chosen. In an indication of how deeply divided the party remains just weeks from the election, well-known political cartoonist Ruz gave Guardado a sketch that portrayed other FMLN leaders as the Flintstones.

The fight concerns whether the FMLN should remain an ideologically pure leftist opposition party or try to broaden its appeal in order to get enough votes to win elections, according to Guardado.

In Cardenal’s estimation, it is about power.

Besides the intraparty squabbling, Guardado acknowledges that FMLN officeholders have not been as responsive to constituents as they could have been, a trend that might cost him votes. He describes the performance of the FMLN’s current mayors and deputies as “satisfactory. It could have been better.”

“But that’s all history,” the soft-spoken, bearded ex-rebel commander insisted during an interview at his home in a middle-class San Salvador neighborhood. “I don’t intend to console myself with what we could have done better. What we need to do now is to inject some joy and enthusiasm into this campaign.”

He is not sure exactly how to do that.

Guardado’s remaining hope comes from the polls: They show that one-third of the voters remain undecided.

“When March 7 comes, people without jobs will still be unemployed, people who do not have enough money to pay the light bill or send their kids to school will still be in the same situation,” he said. “The election depends on how many of those people vote.”